Alchemy in Art and Entertainment - Visual Art

Visual Art

Jan Bäcklund and Jacob Wamberg categorize alchemical art into the following four groups:

1. images made within the alchemical culture proper;
2. genre images which portray alchemists and their environment;
3. religious, mythological or genre images which appropriate alchemical ideas or motifs as a kind of Panofskian ‘disguised symbolism’; and
4. images which show structural affinities with alchemy without iconographically alluding to it.

Within the first group are the illuminations and emblems found within the alchemical texts themselves. Illustrations appeared in early works such as the Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra but were largely absent in medieval works until the mid-thirteenth century. In the early fifteenth century, significant pictorial elements began to appear in alchemical works such as the Ripley Scroll and the Mutus Liber. This trend developed further in sixteenth century emblems. Inspired by the work of Horapollo, this allegorical art form was adopted by alchemists and used in the engravings of Matthäus Merian, Lucas Jennis, Johann Theodor de Bry, Aegidius Sadeler, and others.

The trend of depicting alchemists in genre works began with Pieter Brueghel the Elder (c. 1525-1569), and was continued in the work of Jan Steen (1626-1679) and David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690).

Alchemy has also played a role in the evolution of paint. Alchemists and pigment manufacture intersect as early as the Leyden papyrus X and Stockholm papyrus, and as late as Robert Boyle's Origin of Formes and Qualities (1666). The pigment recipes of artists such as Cennino Cennini and Theophilus have been influenced by both the practical and theoretical aspects of alchemy, and contained some allegorical and magical elements.